New Family of Legless Amphibians Discovered in India

NEW DELHI (NNN-Bernama) -- A group of Indian scientists has discovered an entire new family of amphibians in North East India, China's Xinhua news agency reported Wednesday.

A team led by Delhi University Professor S.D. Biju found these wriggly creatures in the forests has been named Chikilidae - which means Caecilian or what is known as a legless amphibian in Garo, the local tribal language.

The new family is an ancient lineage whose closest relatives occur in Africa, indicating the drifting of the continents more than 150 million years ago.

Dr S Biju who also helped with the research considers the discovery a landmark.

We used DNA mechanism to understand how dispersal mechanism happened from India to Africa or maybe we can say out of India hypothesis. So, we can say that one animal in NE part of India almost evolved 140 million years ago than the

African animals," Dr Biju said.

He described Caecilians as neither snakes nor venomous. They never bite and open their mouth only for feeding. -- NNN-BERNAMA